News tagged Planets

Scientists recently confirmed information regarding Loki Patera, a volcanic depression on Io (the innermost of Jupiter's four moons) that, up until recently, scientists were unable to closely examine. Using the combined Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI), in addition …

Department of Astronomy faculty member James Graham will lead one of the 16 new projects funded by NASA in efforts to streamline the search for habitable planets. The project is part of the newly announced NExSS (Nexus for Exoplanet System Science) which seeks to bring together "the best and the brightest" to oversee the search.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope, now crippled and its four-year mission at an end, nevertheless provided enough data to answer its main research question: How many of the 200 billion stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets?

Based on a statistical analysis of all the Kepler observations, astronomers at UC Berkeley and University of Hawaii, …

"Scientists at UC Berkeley have now used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to look for intelligent radio signals from planets around 86 of these stars. While discovering no telltale signs of life, the researchers calculate that fewer than one in a million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy have planetary civilizations advanced enough to transmit beacons we could detect.